Claimed By The Ruthless Alpha Devils

Meeting my step mum

MIRABELLA

A second ticks by.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Then Kaden jackknifes out of bed and runs out after Kaius, and I sit there staring at the empty doorway with my fingers pressed to my mouth.

“I was drunk,” I hear him say in the hallway, and the words land like a slap.

The burn of it moves through me slow, the way shame always does when it’s trying to disguise itself as something smaller. I press my lips together and stare at the ceiling and tell myself it doesn’t matter, that I don’t care, that this was nothing and I knew it was nothing even while it was happening.

But he wasn’t drunk. I know he wasn’t drunk. He was entirely, completely sober, and he kissed me anyway, and now he’s standing in a hallway outside my door telling his brother he was drunk because the alternative—admitting he wanted to—is apparently worse than the lie.

I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them and listen.

“Stay away from her, Kaden.” Kaius’ voice bleeds with barely concealed irritation, low and hard. “You don’t know who she’s been with. Her past is still a whole lot of grey and we don’t know all of what she’s done.”

A beat of silence. Then the sound of a drawer slamming.

“Truth,” Kaius says. “You know, you could use this. The mate bond makes her attracted to us. Stick with her, find out what she really wants. I’m still not convinced she and Dad don’t have something going on.”

“I don’t think she’s involved with Dad.”

“Are you seriously that naive?”

“I guess I can’t say for sure.” A pause, and even through the wall I can hear Kaius’ disbelief infecting his brother. “How many guys do you think she’s been with?”

“Who knows.” Kaius’ voice is light, casual, like this is a conversation about nothing. “Gold diggers like her will open their legs for anyone who waves a few dollars in front of them.”

I’m not a gold digger. The words press up against the inside of my throat and I swallow them back down. And they couldn’t be more wrong about my supposed s*x life—I’ve never even given a blowjob. On any reasonable scale I sit a lot closer to prude than pro, but sure, go ahead, draw your conclusions.

“Think she could teach me something?” Kaden wonders, and I actually feel my stomach turn.

“How an STD feels,” Kaius says. “But if you want to sleep with her, then do it. I don’t care.”

“Really? Because the rise in your voice indicates otherwise.”

“You’re right,” Kaius says, quieter now. “I do care.”

My hand creeps up to my throat.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Something stupid and treacherous lifts its head in my chest, some i***t part of me that still, after everything, wants to believe that sentence ends somewhere other than where it’s going.

“I care about you,” Kaius says. “I care if you get hurt, sick, whatever. I don’t give two shits about her, though. First we make her suffer, and then at her lowest, we reject her and sever the mate bond completely.”

I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I just sit there with my knees pulled to my chest while my heart does whatever a heart does when it’s been broken into pieces so small they don’t make a sound on the way down.

***

My alarm goes off at five.

My eyes are sticky and my whole body aches in the specific way that comes from crying yourself to sleep. I lie there for exactly thirty seconds feeling sorry for myself, and then I sit up, because I don’t have the luxury of staying down. I have somewhere to be.

I’m meeting my father’s widow today.

Getting ready takes twice as long as it should because my hands won’t cooperate properly, but eventually I make it downstairs looking like a person, which is more than I thought I could manage. Cassian is already up, and he tells me he’ll come with me, and Kieran drives us into the city in silence while I watch the buildings get taller and more expensive out the window.

We stop in front of a high-rise that looks like it costs more per square foot than most people make in a lifetime.

Cassian tells me he’ll wait in the car.

“This sucks,” I say flatly.

He reaches over and touches my arm. “You don’t have to go.”

I look at him. “What’s the alternative? I go up and keep living with the Windsors, or I stay in the car and get taken away. That’s not really a choice.”

“Mirabella.” He calls my name as I step out onto the curb, and I turn. His expression is doing something complicated, something that looks almost like guilt.

“Adrian wanted you. When he found out he had a daughter, it tore him up. I swear to you, he would have loved you.” He pauses. “Remember that. No matter what Lucy says.”

With those not-quite-encouraging words still ringing in my ears, I let Kieran walk me inside.

The lobby is beautiful that places are beautiful when money is the only consideration—cool stone walls, crystal lights catching everything, deep wood trim that probably costs more than my mother’s entire apartment. But the whole thing doesn’t stun me as it’d have, before the Windsors came into my life. I follow Kieran across the marble floor to the far elevator.

“She’s here to see Mrs. Sinclair,” he tells the desk clerk.

“You can go right up.”

He gives me a small push toward the elevator. “Last one. Press P for penthouse.”

Of course it’s the penthouse.

The elevator is paneled in wood and completely silent except for a faint mechanical whir,to accompany its upward movement. It stops too soon. The doors slide open into a wide, short hallway with a single set of double doors at the end, and I stand there for a moment just staring at them.

Holy s**t. Does she live on the entire floor?

A woman in a maid’s uniform opens one of the doors before I’ve even knocked. “Mrs. Sinclair is waiting for you in the sitting room. May I get you a beverage?”

“Water,” I croak. “Please.”

My sneakers sink into the carpet as I follow her down the hall, and I feel exactly like a lamb walking toward something with very large teeth.

Lucy Sinclair is seated beneath a large painting of a nude woman—golden hair loose, face turned over one shoulder, green eyes aimed at the viewer with deliberate seduction. I stare at it for a beat longer than I mean to, and then it hits me.

It’s her. The face in the painting is hers.

“Do you like it?” Lucy asks, one eyebrow raised. “I have others throughout the house, but this one is the most conservative.”

Conservative. I can see her ass crack, where the canvas cuts off, and the word conservative is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

“It’s nice,” I say, because I am nothing if not a person who lies politely when the occasion calls for it.

I move to lower myself into the other chair in the room.

“Did I tell you to sit down?”

I stop. Heat crawls up my face. “No. I’m sorry.” I stay standing.

Her eyes move over me with the slow, methodical assessment of someone pricing something they don’t intend to buy.

“So you’re the girl Cassian says is Adrian’s daughter.” She tilts her head. “Have you taken a paternity test yet?”

“No.”

She laughs, and it’s a hollow, awful sound. “Then how do we know you’re not Cassian’s bastard that he’s trying to pass off as Adrian’s? That would be convenient for him. He always claimed he was faithful to his little wife, but you’d be direct evidence that he wasn’t.”

My stomach turns, but I keep my shoulders straight. “I’m not Cassian’s daughter.”

“And you know that how?”

“Because Cassian isn’t the kind of man to ignore a child he knew about.”

She sneers. “You’ve been with the Windsors for all of a week and you think you know them?” She leans forward, both hands pressing into the arms of her chair. “Cassian and Adrian were old time friends. They shared more women than a kindergarten class shares toys.”

She lets that settle, then adds, almost pleasantly, “I have no doubt your w***e mother screwed them both.”

Something hot and sharp moves through me. “Don’t talk about my mother. You know nothing about her.”

“I know enough.” She leans back, entirely unbothered. “She was dirt poor and tried to shake Adrian down for money, attempted to blackmail him, and when that didn’t work she pretended she had his child. What she didn’t know is that Adrian was sterile.”

I look at her for a moment. She’s flinging accusations the way a child flings food, just to see what sticks, and the familiarity of the tactic steadies me more than anything else could.

“Then let’s order the paternity test,” I say. “I don’t have anything to lose. If I’m a Windsor, I can claim a sixth of the Windsor fortune. That’s a better deal than just being Cassian’s ward.”

Something shifts in her expression, and it isn’t pleasant.

“You think Cassian Windsor cares about you?” Her voice drops, going quieter and more deliberate. “That man couldn’t keep his wife alive. She killed herself rather than stay with him. That’s who you’re cozying up to. And his boys? Drunk on money and privilege and he lets them run completely wild.”

Her eyes hold mine. “I hope you lock your door at night.”

Unwittingly, my mind goes to that first morning—Kaius in my doorway, casual and cold and threatening. I grit my teeth and say nothing.

“Why did you ask me here?” I ask instead. “What was the actual point of this?”

Lucy offers a cool, thin smile. “I wanted to see what I’m dealing with.” One eyebrow lifts. “And I must say, I’m not too impressed.”

That makes two of us.

“Here’s my advice,” she continues, folding her hands in her lap with the composure of someone who has said this before and enjoyed it every time. “Take whatever Cassian has given you and leave. That house is cancer for women, and someday soon it’ll be nothing but dust.”

Her eyes don’t move from mine.

“I suggest you get out while you still can.”

The words hang in the air between us, and they sound exactly like the threat she intends them to be.